Fugro’s marine business has reported €224m in earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) for 2023, compared with €71m in 2022.
Renewables accounted for 35% of the company’s revenues in 2023 and 55% of revenue growth.
Fugro’s EBIT margin for the group improved to 11.5%; all regions reported higher results as a result of top line growth in combination with operational efficiencies.
In marine, both site characterisation and asset integrity business lines reported strongly improved margins; in particular “site characterisation performance in Europe-Africa was exceptional”.
Capital expenditure amounted to €182m, below Fugro’s guidance of €200m, excluding the impact of the unwind of the sale and lease back arrangement of the Fugro Scout and Fugro Voyager vessels.
Recent operational highlights in renewables include an offshore wind project with Attentive Energy in New York, US, for wind, metocean and environmental monitoring.
In Europe, Fugro secured a geotechnical and geophysical surveys for Lithuania’s first offshore wind farm with Ignitis Renewables, a geophysical survey for Doordewind offshore wind farm zone, off the Netherlands, a nearshore investigation for RWE Awel y Mor off Wales and metocean floating lidar surveys for Acciona Energia in Italy.
Fugro CEO Mark Heine said: “I am excited to announce another quarter of strong performance, concluding a year in which we made great progress in delivering on our strategy, resulting in an EBIT margin of 11.5%.
“By benefitting from significant investments in energy systems around the world, including offshore wind, we have realised a major step-up in our results.
“Better contracting conditions, substantially higher activity levels and good project execution resulted in a step change in profitability, in particular in our marine site characterisation activities.
“We delivered on our Path to Profitable Growth targets, and we also made good progress with our non-financial targets by improving employee engagement and reducing our vessels’ carbon emissions.
“I am also pleased that our clean balance sheet and robust cash flow generation enable us to resume dividend payments.”